Boot As PXE Server for Network Data Centre & Server Farm Diagnostics

Booting PC-Diag as PXE Server in Linux and Windows allows the accuracy of self boot hardware level diagnostics and reporting to be carried out on remote networked servers in Data Centers, Server Farms and PC's on LAN & WAN networks.

Go to Boot as PXE Server in Windows

Booting PC-Diag Diagnostic Software as a PXE server running Linux.

Note- it is out of scope to describe how to install DHCP server and TFTP server, but for completeness we’ll give examples when necessary.

1. Make a PC-Diag boot image

a. Put a blank floppy into the floppy drive

b. Run pcdd_demo.exe or Run pcddpro.exe if you have the fully functional version

2. Setup PXE server

a. I use Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net/get.php) , it has already DHCP server and TFTP server preinstalled and scripts to start PXE server

b. Downloaded http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.9-2005-05-27-EN.iso

c. Burned a CD with knoppix image

d. Boot the PC from CD image – this is going to be PXE server

3. Start PXE server

a. /etc/init.d/knoppix-terminalserve start – set DHCP range 192.168.1.201 192.168.1.250, my subnet 192.168.1.x – if you already have DHCP server running change the config to this:

# global settings
allow booting;
allow bootp;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
next-server 192.168.1.101;
if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "Etherboot" { filename "etherboot.nbi"; }
else { filename "pxelinux.0"; }
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
range 192.168.1.201 192.168.1.250; }

IMPORTANT: If you have 2 DHCP servers running at the same time, the first server should be configured as follows:

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
<other config here>
filename "pxelinux.0"
next-server <pxe host>; }

IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to restart the server:

a. sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart

b. Go to tftpboot: cd /tftpboot

c. Download pxelinux utilities: sudo wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-3.11.tar

d. Decompress syslinux and copy memdisk to /tftpboot:

c p syslinux/memdisk/memdisk /tftpboot

4. Create pcdiag.img

a. Put the floppy disk from step 1 into the floppy drive

b. sudo dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/tftpboot/pcdiag.img

5. Configure pxelinux

a. cd /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

b. edit default:

vi default

DEFAULT memdisk

APPEND initrd=pcdiag.img

TIMEOUT 300

PROMPT 1

DISPLAY boot.msg

LABEL knoppix

KERNEL memdisk

APPEND initrd=pcdiag.img ramdisk=10000

6. Now boot all the PCs from network and PC-Diag will be loaded auto-magically to diagnose your Network Hardware problems

Download These Instructions

Booting PC-Diag from a PXE server running Windows.

Network Booting PC-Diag Image using Windows as PXE server.

1. Download & Install Network Boot Tools from EmBoot

More info can be found at http://www.emboot.com/products_NetworkBootTools.htm

http://63.167.252.168/NetworkBootTools_Trial.shtml - 15 days trial version

2. Make a PC-Diag boot image

a. Put a blank floppy into the floppy drive

b. Run pcdd_demo.exe or Run pcddpro.exe if you have a fully functional version

3. Create network image

a. Run Boot Image Editor (start->programs->emBoot Network Boot Tools->Boot Image Editor) and click on “Create a TCP/IP or PXE image file” button.

b. Set Image File Name (For instance: c:\tftpboot\pcdiag.img)

c. Select the floppy drive (For instance: drive a: ) and click OK

d. Click on PXE menu boot file

e. Click on Add and use the file from b. (in my case c:\tftpboot\pcdiag.img)

f. Save it (For instance: c:\tftpboot\pcdiag.pxe)

g. Exit

4. Add network boot image to the PXE server

a. Run BOOTPTAB Editor (start->programs->emBoot Network Boot Tools-> BOOTPTAB Editor)

b. Go to Menu Edit->Add Host

c. Set Name (For instance: PCDIAG), set Node (MAC address of the pc to use PC-Diag image) and set image the one from 3.f (in my case pcdiag.pxe)

d. Go to Option TAB and click on default

e. Go to Templates TAB, click on default and leave hd blank , hd=

f. Save it (Menu File->Save)

5. Run TFTP Server

a. Run TFTP Server (start->programs->emBoot Network Boot Tools-> TFTP Server)

b. Go To Menu Options->Settings , on Configure Tab unselect all TFTP options (Allow tSize option, allow timeout & allow blksize) click OK

c. Restart the server menu File->Stop Serving File->Start Serving

6. Run PXE Server

a. Check menu Option->Proxy if the DHCP server is not the current PC

7. Now change the boot sequence on the client PC.

Download These Instructions

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